________________
INTRODUCTION
69
it in the list of Desi words. At any rate vadựāradhanā means a big Ārādhanā; and as shown above, Bha. Ā. is a pretty big work among the Ārādhanā texts so far known. So it looks quite reasonable that the Bha. Ā., in order to be distinguished from later and smaller Arādbană texts, came to be called by the names Mulärādhanā and Vaddärädhana. The colophon that concludes Kavaca, therefore, refers to Bhaga. A. and its author Sivakoti; and it has nothing to say either about the title of the Kannada stories or about their author.
Pathak gave currency to the name Revākoțyācārya following the reading of the Ms. L. It is an improbable name so far as Jaina authors are concerned; there is every possibility that the Old-Kannada si from the exemplar has been wrongly copied as re in the Ms. L; and now other Mss., which read Sivakotyācārya, have come to light. In the light of the explanation given by me above, it is plain that the colophon mentions Sivakoți as the author of Vaddārādhaņā whose verses form the basis of the Kannada stories. We may call the Kannada work by the name Vaddārādhanā following the Mss. of Mudabidri and Kolhapur, but we have no evidence to attribute the authorship of Kannada stories to Sivakoţi. To conclude, we can call these stories by the name Vaddārādhane, but we do not know who the author was.
I have already discussed the probable age of Sivakoți and his Bha, Ā. A tentative attempt may be made here to settle the date of this Kannaďa text on which some views are already expressed. 1) Pathak Casually implied that this work is contemporary with Torgallu inscription of A. D. 1188; and R. Narasimhachary, who had no occasion to examine the complete Ms., quietly followed Pathak and assigned this work to c. 1180 A.D. 2) Mr. D. L. Narasimhachary detects, in this text, certain old terminations like -oń, -? and -ör etc. found in the inscriptions upto the 8th century A. D. and earlier forms like irdon, pordidon, also the use of amma for appa found in the Kannada works upto the both century A. D. The text shows close similarities with the style of Cāmundarāya-purāņa (A. D. 978). Bhadrabāhu's story agrees with that given by Harişeņa in his Kathākośa (A. D. 931) which might be the source of this Kannada version. In the light of these consi. derations, he would assign the date c. 940 A. D. for this work. 3) Mr. M. Govind Pai advances the following arguments to settle the date of this work: In the text of the Vaddārādhane some verses from Bhartphari's Satakas are found, but their text and date are not definite. The text mentions Dinära, so it must be later than 2nd century A. D. It calls Belgola by the name Kalbappu which is first mentioned in a Sravana Belgola inscription of 650 A.D., so it must be earlier than 650. Then to comfirm this, he collects good many words and forms that are found in early Kannada works and inscriptions; and thus the Kannada Vaddārădhane is to be put not later than 6th century A.D.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
